Source: Dress and Ideology. Fashioning Identity from Antiquity to the Present
2017

Book
chapter

The promulgation of sumptuary laws, regulating specific items of dress that might be worn by various individuals on certain occasions, is a well-known chapter of European social history from the late Middle Ages to the eighteenth century.On Jewish sumptuary legislation in general see: Salo Wittmayer Baron, The Jewish Community: Its History and Structure to the American Revolution, 3 vols, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1942; Louis Finkelstein, Jewish Self-Government in the Middle Ages,

Source: Dress and Ideology. Fashioning Identity from Antiquity to the Present
2017

Book
chapter

Only a few instances from the Roman Empire actually provide scholars with near-complete assemblages of panoplies, and most rare of all are the remains that derived directly from conflict lands. In addition to the celebrated navy soldier from ce79 Herculaneum,R. Gore, “2000 Years of Silence: The Dead Do Tell Tales at Vesuvius,” National Geographic, 165 (1984), pp. 557–613; S. Ortisi “Pompeji und Herculaneum—Soldaten in den Vesuvsdäten,” Archäologie der Schlachtfelder—Militaria aus Zerstörungshoriz

Source: The Superhero Costume. Identity and disguise in fact and fiction
2016

Book
chapter

Superheroes are immediately identified as extraordinary by their costumes. These costumes are, in contrast to the civilian clothing of their alter ego, colorful, bold, figure-hugging, and often seemingly impractical. At first glance, they may print (comics)accuracyappear ludicrous, but their origins reveal aspects of these costumes to be both necessary and plausible.

This essay explores the relationship with fashion and Orientalism as a modern study of Western culture, as well as an ancient dialogue between East and West that has laid the foundations for the modern fashion system. Designers discussed include Paul Poiret, Yves Saint Laurent, and John Galliano, who each represent various waves of Orientalism and the changing ways in which its appearance in fashion collections contributed to the course of fashion and design history.

This article is an exploratory history within a history of the catwalk since the 1970s. It examines the centrality of makeup to shifting systems and structures of catwalk performance and spectacle, but it is not a trend-by-trend analysis of cosmetic practices and products. Rather, the aim is to examine catwalk makeup as a generative force within the wider transformation of fashion image as commodity and cultural form in the latter decades of the twentieth century.

In the early 1980s, pop musicians embraced historicism in their performance attire. Adam and the Ants, a new wave band based in London, donned clothing inspired by historic military outfits, nineteenth-century dandies, and pirates. They were among the recognized leaders of the New Romantics movement, a London youth subculture known for its taste for eccentric fashion. The band was formed in 1977 and achieved fame with a streak of successful albums, particularly Kings of the Wild Frontier (1980) a

emotiondandyBefore the twentieth century, sunglasses as we think of them today were not in any kind of widespread use. Tinted glass (green or blue) had been recommended since the eighteenth century—but for correctivespectaclesspectacles (Ayscough in Drewry 1994) intended to be worn indoors. Mid-eighteenth century Venice saw green tinted glasses used against glare from the water (the “Goldoni” type, worn by and named after the leader of the commedia dell’ arte). At the turn of the nineteenth centu

Exploring speed in the last chapter has already enabled us to consider some aspects of the relationship between sunglasses and modern technologytechnology. But this relationship goes further. Sunglasses became a more general sign of encounters with the wonders and perils of modern technology; in the early days of TV advertising, sunglasses were worn by immaculate, 1950s housewives shading their eyes from the terrifying brilliance of whites achieved with innovative washing powders.

Before sunglasses, certain modernitychangechanges were taking place which created an environment in which they could become functionally and symbolically useful. The city, as an exemplar of modern life, was a place of new opportunities for display, self-fashioning, and casual voyeurism, as well as new levels of sensory and psychological stimulation which threatened to swamp the individual, and from which some kind of protection was required. This initially came in the form of a “blasé attitude,”

This study extends historian Stefan Petrow’s 2009 study of the convict stain and Narryna by suggesting ways in which its effects can be overcome or reinterpreted, especially in relation to dress. The metaphor of the convict stain relates to a social stigma dating from the 1840s, when anti-transportationists in VDL began a fierce political and moral campaign against convict transportation to the colony. The stain metaphor was a nineteenth-century term applied by historians from the 1850s through t

The omnipresent significance of the eighteenth century and the masked ball for the House of Dior found expression in the design of “Angie” for the “Masquerade and Bondage” collection, a short variation on 1760s court dress, paraphrasing the fashionable life and cruel fate of Marie Antoinette. Using the surface of the hip panels as a canvas for narrative and caricaturized embroideries, the dress becomes an epitome of storytelling through dressmaking, evoking crucial episodes of French history. Gal

“I can’t be too literal with my references,” Alexander McQueen said in 2000, when asked to pinpoint the theme of a recent collection. “It’s a number of references culminating together to make one idea.” Nevertheless, with a researched family history dating back to the 1500s, McQueen always acknowledged that “Every part of my background comes from something, be it the Jacobites or the Huguenots,” and influences from Giovanni Bellini to André Courrèges can be glimpsed in his collections. The pieces

This chapter will consider some of the pioneering works in the field of dress history. Although these works predate any notion of interdisciplinarity, I believe they achieve an enviable ‘indisciplinarity’, a condition that offers an alternative to the contemporary disciplinary side-taking threatening to cannibalize our field. Before proceeding any further, however, it should be made clear that this chapter is in no way intended to be some sort of polemic against the current state of dress studies

It is firstly important to put Gaultier within the context of his times. From the first catwalk show he was considered an “enfant terrible” yet at the same time a superb craftsman, and a designer who acknowledged the history and heritage of French fashion. His view of the world was from Paris and however much time he spent time in London and declared his admiration for London club culture and youthful attitudes to style, he remains a designer whose reference points span Madame Grès to Barbès Roch

In this collection, presented in the Champs-Élysées cinema, Karl Lagerfeld introduced the “slope,” a new iteration of the Chanel jacket that featured a narrow-fitting shoulder line. The clothes were influenced by a combination of eighteenth-century robes à la française and the mod 1960s, with open panniers that revealed miniskirts and thigh-high boots. The playfulness of the collection spoke to the young and daring attitude of the new couture customer. For the finale, Lagerfeld presented three br

Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, there have been a number of political events that have had an important impact on the development of Moroccan fashion. Under the French FrenchProtectorateProtectorate, for example, it was decided to separate the new European city centres from the indigenousindigenous Arab city centres. This resulted in a cultural buffer against French cultural influences, allowing the continuity of a Moroccan lifestylelifestyle. Over time, this led to two more

It is only through our ability to remember that we experience “being/becoming (in time)being” or “becoming” in time, experiences through which we develop a sense of selfsense of self in time and place and in relation to others (see Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi and Levi 2011: 37). Or in other words, the activating, sharing and shaping of memories together with others is crucial to the formation of identities, the generation of social relations/social relationshipssocial relationships and our experienc

vintage clothesAn early usage of the word vintage in the context of clothing can be found in American Vogue (magazine)Vogue. In the rubric “Smart Fashions for Limited Incomes” in the September 1913 issue, the writer offers “Several Ruses for Disguising the Vintage of Last Year’s Wardrobe,” to make an up-to-date appearance with clothes that survive from past seasons. This includes hands-on advice on updating the “tailoringtailor suit of last year’s vintage” with a “new, upsloping belt” so the suit